Annie gets her gun

Having taken pictures of a half-naked child, Annie Leibovitz misses the point slightly:

"Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little make-up, and I think it is very beautiful."

You hear? It's not like she's caked Miley's face with make-up like a whore or something.

Leibovitz misses (or pretends to be missing) what might be upsetting people - it's not a question of if the image is beautiful or not, it's the extent to which an adult should be printing sexualised pictures of children in a national magazine. Perhaps the picture is being misinterpreted, but Leibovitz is not an idiot. She knows exactly what sort of reaction a sexy picture of a child is going to get - fluttering your eyelids and saying "gosh, but it's pretty" is no kind of explanation at all.